AI expert says that 'sex robots' will be mainstream in 10 years - <AUTHOR> https://sextechguide.com/news/2016/06/10/ai-expert-sex-robots-10-years/ <comment><USER2> I worry about the ever increasing ways, humans have to escape reality, and isolate themselves.

Drugs and alcohol. Video games, soon, full immersive. Streaming videos. Porn. One demand deliver of everything. Sexbots, coming soon. More remote work.

Literally someone could work, eat, and never leave their house if they wanted to.

It seems like technology is already making people more isolated. I really worry about this.

<comment><USER3> The purpose of technology is to make peoples lives easier and more controllable, and it turns out that dealing with other people is often hard and introduces uncontrollabilty.

Technology is an alternative solution to many of the same problems that we used to have to use community to solve.

Finding ways to build community when we aren't forced to group together for survival is one of the big challenges of modern life.

On the other hand, technology also provides us with reasons to connect (shared digital activities), it breaks down the barriers of connection (time and space, and increasingly language), it reduces the cost of connection, allows us to share other peoples lives in a way that was previously impossible.

Most of what most people do on the internet is build community, real community, so even while we're contemplating the dangers, let's not get too pessimistic.

<comment><USER4> Technology more and more transforms from a solution to a problem as social interactions are essential to being a human. Connecting to people digitally can't replace real contact in person.

<comment><USER5> Technology doesn't take anything away from those that actually want to have contact with other people in real life.

<comment><USER6> Counter-argument: trying to hold a dinner conversation with people or have a meeting when people are glued to the latest bubble news on their phones.

<comment><USER5> Hm... Sounds like _they 're_ fine, only _you_ see this as an issue - I don't see how imposig your values on them would be an acceptable solution. I guess a better solution eould be having dinner with people who value the same thing as you do (dinner conversation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://xkcd.com/678/](https://xkcd.com/678/)

"We haven't finished inventing it yet, but when we do it'll be awesome."

Seems about right.

</comment><comment><USER8> I live in an area of Shenzhen under massive construction (like much of China). Surrounding my apartment complex on three sides are constructions projects filled with many thousands of migrant workers- all male. They will be working on the project for at least six months before they can go home. Shenzhen has modernized- so has no real "red light district" like it used to or some Chinese cities still have. There is no chance these men can have sex for at least 6 months. When they go home there is a very good chance they still will not be able to have sex since most young women have migrated to the cities. These men are all very polite. I have never experienced anything worse than a shy smile. How long will that last for?

Of course a meal made by a wife tastes best, a husband who carries your bags most romantic, a true lover- of course, but Chinese have to be realistic due to our circumstance. So are very, very interested in automating some forms of manual labor. This technology is spoken of all the time. We have few other options if we want to keep a stable society. Most of those options are not very good for women.

</comment><comment><USER9> So, if one has a device attached to ones genitals and it is remote controlled by another person does that constitute adultery or masterbation? If it is a script controlling it based on physiological responses?

I suspect that the phone sex lines that exist are more masterbation than adultery - but then phone sex with ones girlfriend is what?

Human sexuality - complicated innit. Won't get simpler with robots in the way.

<comment><USER10> > So, if one has a device attached to ones genitals and it is remote > controlled by another person

There's a word for that, and it's "teledildonics". The term was invented by none other than Ted Nelson.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would say that a positive effect of sex robots could be the reduction (and possibly elimination) of female human trafficking. Overall, I don't think people will just abandon human contact, but the underserved segment of people who already struggle with those social norms will have a better outlet - rather than providing a market to a horrible and dehumanizing industry.

<comment><USER12> I hope you are right, but I am also halfway expecting to see someone complain at some point that sex bots are just another form of automation taking our jobs and yet another reason why we need basic income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In other news, Boston Dynamics announces their latest pivot.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would imagine that humans will maintain a wide variety of relationships with "sex robots", with some treating them mostly as tools/appliances and others seeking social relationships.

Interestingly, I've been a researcher in the field of human-robot interaction for around five years now and sex robots are for the most part unexplored within HRI academic research.

</comment><comment><USER15> Frankly I don't think sex robots will be worse than pornography or prostitution.

<comment><USER16> In the end, it will become monopolized, organized prostitution, you will have to marry your sex-robot. Catholic. And have at least one offspring (either machine or man).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great. The more options the better. For the men and women who can't form relationships. This is better than nothing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe this can be a good thing. Market competition providing an alternative for certain, shall we say, _needs_ , means that the ones providing them in the past need to compete in other ways and provide more value.

On the flip side, you think the marriage rates are low now? Just you wait...

<comment><USER19> > On the flip side, you think the marriage rates are low now? Just you wait...

Is this a bad thing? If there are people who would prefer a sex-bot partner over getting married, how good would you expect their counterfactual marriages to be? Would it be _better_ if someone took the sex-bot option away and they got married instead?

And I don't think _under_ -population is the problem we're facing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20>
        "What if it's your first time – your first sexual
        experience? What are you going to think of the opposite
        sex then? What would they think a woman or a man
        actually is?"

I've never really understood this mindset.

To pick a random example, lets say that someone's first experience of playing football is from a video game. They may end up with a "warped perspective" of what the game is like to play in reality. But is that a damaging and harmful thing? I don't think so. And I don't see why sex should be treated much differently than any other activity.

<comment><USER21> You understand that football is a sport, a game, with few long-term consequences outside of the game; sex is usually a deeply emotional experience with many short and long-term effects on body and mind very different from sports.

<comment><USER22> Seems that exactly one of the changes brought about by pornography is that young people decreasingly see sex that way.

<comment><USER12> Historically, antibiotics and birth control have a well proven impact of that sort. This was not just a phenomenon of the 1960s. Other historical times and places where you could prevent pregnancy and disease also saw the flourishing of "free love" philosophies.

Actual serious consequences is a big part of what drives people to view sex as very serious business. Most people are happy to see it as just another form of play time if you can nix the threat of death, maiming and babies with a fairly high degree of confidence.

<comment><USER23> Sex has long been a far more casual activity than commonly portrayed. So, people often have huge misconceptions about people's behavior both past and present.

<comment><USER12> When I have spoken about sex with people older than myself, I have sometimes been told "Well, TV went off at 9pm and there just wasn't anything else interesting to do between 9pm and going to sleep" or words to that effect. (Hippies explained: "It was 9pm and we were bored.") Similarly, I knew someone who traveled a lot for work and casual hookups were just a thing to do when trapped in a hotel in the middle of nowhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> China will need this to prevent civil unrest, so it will probably be sooner

<comment><USER25> Civic unrest in China is much less probable than in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> And on the day the Apple iBot launched with add on "accessory", not a single soul could be found on reddit or twitch.

</comment><comment><USER27> Certainly an easy way to keep people who suck from producing children.

<comment><USER28> Someone can easily end up as someone with no romantic prospects without being someone who "sucks". For example, being a male who has the "wrong" hobbies and interests or isn't naturally attractive enough to get the time of day from women of equal attractiveness. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but I'm sure this will resonate with the majority of males reading this who are exclusively into tech/aren't highly attractive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How long until robosexuals officially receive equal protection under the 14th amendment (for US robosexuals)?

</comment><comment><USER30> [deleted]

<comment><USER31>
      Why is it considered acceptable to enslave
      AI robots

AI is largely hypothetical at the moment, and whether such things are ever acceptable or not will depend on the form AI eventually takes, if it ever exists at all.

"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" by Douglas Adams includes an animal that has been genetically engineered to want to be eaten [1]. If AI took a form where their personalities could be precisely configured, they could simply be configured to joyfully consent to whatever fate their creators had in store for them.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1nxaQhsaaw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1nxaQhsaaw)</comment></comment>


How eBay built a new world on little more than trust - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/13/how-ebay-built-new-world-little-more-than-trust <comment><USER2> >> The solution was to ask buyers and sellers to rate one another and to make those ratings public.

As I understand it, eBay feedback is now one-way. A seller can't leave a negative rating for a buyer.

 _How are Feedback scores calculated?

For each transaction, buyers and sellers can choose to rate each other by leaving Feedback. Buyers can leave a positive, negative, or a neutral rating, plus a short comment. Sellers can leave a positive rating and a short comment._

[http://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/howitworks.html](http://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/howitworks.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ebay was founded in 1995 and it is hard to remember what the internet was like back then. It democratized retail purchases so that everyone can buy and sell. In many ways, I would agree with this article's viewpoint that eBay was a precursor to uber and airbnb. A very early precursor since smartphones had to proliferate before we could open an app and email hosts while on the go.

</comment><comment><USER4> >> _The solution was to ask buyers and sellers to rate one another and to make those ratings public._

So it isn't trust but social control.

<comment><USER5> Social control? Where's the control part? Ebay does not mandate that anyone participate in its system. We are all free to avoid it (as I do). Ebay doesn't affect me and I find it strange that you label "social control" a system where people voluntarily join and freely choose to accept to share their ratings for the benefit of others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the state-of-the-art in these kinds of systems in terms of one that's easy to use and makes it easier to eliminate effects of malicious feedback?</comment>


The Craigwatch Story - <AUTHOR> http://craigwatch.com/story.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I used Craigwatch. It was a useful tool - when a search pops, I get an email. I used to use Google Reader for this but when Reader died so did my RSS reading habit, so now email is the only part of my daily workflow that I poll frequently.

The real mystery to me is why Craigslist shut the service down, because (protocols aside) it wasn't fundamentally different from any other way of consuming craigslist. Craigslist's terms of service is actually pretty confusing:

 _USE. You agree not to use or provide software (except for general purpose web browsers and email clients, or software expressly licensed by us) or services that interact or interoperate with CL, e.g. for downloading, uploading, posting, flagging, emailing, search, or mobile use. Robots, spiders, scripts, scrapers, crawlers, etc. are prohibited, as are misleading, unsolicited, unlawful, and /or spam postings/email. You agree not to collect users' personal and/or contact information ("PI")._

...which if you think about it, bans the use of RSS readers too. There's a short blurb on the RSS page:

 _craigslist RSS feeds are for your personal use only, and are not available for commercial use without first obtaining a license from craigslist. Please consult our <Terms of Use> for more information on using craigslist RSS feeds._

The only relevant part of the Terms of Use is the section mentioned above, which doesn't really shed any light on the situation.

Honestly this is really confusing. Once again, Craigslist disappoints.

<comment><USER2> By my reading, prior to Dec 2013, the old terms[1] permitted using personal RSS readers but forbade aggregators. However, the new terms are much more restrictive; they prohibit any use of the craigslist website outside of a web browser. Thus, I think that it is now against the terms to use an RSS reader to read the craigslist RSS feeds! (By the way, it is also against the craigslist terms to write a crawler such as google.com or archive.org even if it respects robots.txt!)

I happened to review these terms because I too was sent a letter from Brian Hennessy representing craigslist last Friday regarding a little Chrome extension I wrote a couple years ago[2].

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20131128233421/http://www.craigs...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131128233421/http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use)

[2] [https://github.com/yonran/craigslist- shortcuts](https://github.com/yonran/craigslist-shortcuts)

<comment><USER3> I'm curious as to whether you got a response to your refusal to "comply." Did he get back to you after that?

<comment><USER2> Not yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the past, I have sometimes used Craigslist's RSS feature to watch for the appearance of items. That is to say, the ability of CL to export a keyword search as an RSS feed that you can save in your feed reader and watch for updates.

In what ways did Craigwatch improve over RSS? If it still operated today, why would I use that instead of scraping RSS items directly from Craigslist to my feed reader?

Did Craigwatch use RSS feeds, or was it scraping material from the rendered HTML?

<comment><USER5> Useful free stuff is typically gone in minutes. Only junk remains posted.

Its RSS feeds have a refresh period of 1 hour, which is simply too long to have the opportunity to grab hot items.

As Craigslist has very shallow category listings in its "free" category, where you can't separate furniture from clothes as an example, the site forces users to rely on manually refreshing pages, which change very often.

I have better user experience using Craigslist from my iPad. Craigslist appears to selectively make the service available to app makers but not to websites.

In the past 3 days of shopping for a specific car within about 15 Craigslist local communities, I managed to get automatically blocked by the service several times. What I am looking for is very specific and I don't mind traveling a bit to get what I want.

I ended up having to write code with sleep timers to reduce my number of web queries once I narrowed what I wanted.

An essential feature in the iPad app is that I can cross off listings that are no longer interesting to me and highlight favorites. There is no listing cross-off feature for the website.

I guess my next step is to add that feature. _laugh_

<comment><USER4> Wiseleo, is that really true about the refresh rate? RSS readers have a configurable rate. Often there is a one hour default in order to be reasonably nice to the server. Basically, a Craigslist RSS item is just a URL with the search parameters embedded. Maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect that whenever you fetch this URL, the server executes the search and produces the results as RSS XML items, so the fetch rate is controlled by you (your reader). Or are you saying there is some additional throttling on the server side, so that RSS- based searches do not see up-to-the-second updates that are visible through the Web interface? So that no matter how often you refresh the RSS feed, you don't see new items that are already visible via HTML?

<comment><USER5> Gotta love being downvoted for an informative post... :)

If you look at the XML returned for RSS feeds, you will notice:

<syn:updateBase>2014-07-16T14:25:18-07:00</syn:updateBase> <syn:updateFrequency>1</syn:updateFrequency> <syn:updatePeriod>hourly</syn:updatePeriod>

That is the configuration setting for RSS readers to not update more than once per hour.

See spec: [http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/](http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/)

Craigslist has aggressive blocking for excessive GET requests. The RSS feed contains only the first 250 characters of text description of the ad. Thus, you will see that something got added but you will not see its details. More importantly, attributes are not available as part of the RSS feed.

That means that you were interested in specific colors of a car, you would need to define a separate RSS feed for red, yellow, and so on.

It is hard to test whether the RSS search results are additionally throttled, but you will likely get blocked while testing. :)

While legitimately shopping, I got blocked multiple times for becoming more efficient.

RSS is not hard to read. Here are some red manual transmission cars in San Francisco Bay Area [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cto?auto_paint=7&auto_tra...](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cto?auto_paint=7&auto_transmission=1&s=0&format=rss)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So will IFTTT get a cease and desist sometime in the near future, or have they come to an agreement with Craigslist to provide their channel?

</comment><comment><USER7> A while back, I hacked together notifications using RSS, but lately, I just use IFTTT...

[https://ifttt.com/craigslist](https://ifttt.com/craigslist)

<comment><USER8> I use IFTTT's craigslist channel all the time for long-term polling of craigslist. Not sure how instant it is, but notifications are pretty reliable.

</comment></comment><comment> houston-mouse One thing I like about this reflection is the highlighting of the weirdness of the connection between a service's creators and its users. I'm on both sides of the fence, and I find myself wrestling with _lots_ of different feelings towards my users (mostly positive, but not all). I guess this dynamic has existed since the printing press, but it feels a bit more intimate now since you can see the emails and read the tweets.

<comment><USER9> This is a very good point, and something that was also touched on in [http://www.saurik.com/id/20](http://www.saurik.com/id/20) recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would think CL using a proxy that silently blocks client ips that interact with the service suspiciously may be cheaper than sending out lawyer letters and more immediately effective. Just prefer technical solutions to legal threatening I guess..

<comment><USER11> For fun and as a learning experience, I built a simple CL scrapping web site. I set it up on a small aws instance about 6 months ago and after playing around with and making modifications/updates to it over the course of a month or two, I largely forgot about it. After seeing this thread, it dawned on me that I had not received an e-mail update on any of my search alerts for a while. I ssh'ed into the server and got a 403 with 'wget craigslist.com', so my guess is that they are doing some sort of blocking. Looking at the logs, the block probably started about a month ago.

<comment><USER12> Modifying the user agent to mimic a normal browser might solve the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I ran a system that was a back end for craigslist for many years, and I never stopped even after getting a cease and desist from them. What really got me was after they started charging people to post ads... that really killed my business model. Generally its not a great idea to build a business model around the availability of a third party... I think the whole concept of craigslist sending a 'cease and desist' over what is generally considered public_html is a laughable joke in my opinion, and good luck trying to restrict public html from crawlers and robots.

</comment><comment><USER14> A little bit off topic but interesting nonetheless.

I've known Beau for many years now and his writing style has improved so much. He is a testament to the "practice makes perfect" (or better at least) mantra. It's really interesting to see the transition in his travel blog from when he started writing to now. If you're interested you can check out. Compare the first post to the most recent. [http://dangertravels.com/](http://dangertravels.com/)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for sharing, his travel stories are inspiring

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd be willing to be that Craigslist shut you down because they're building their own "watch" feature. The same thing happened with Padmapper - they sent them a cease and desist letter, and then came out with their own map feature ([http://newyork.craigslist.org/aap/#map](http://newyork.craigslist.org/aap/#map)).

</comment><comment><USER17> Does it mean that any browser extension which is modifying CL web page(s) violating their terms of use?

</comment><comment><USER18> it's a great story.

BTW, can anyone give me perspective on what it would take to recreate this in Python? As a learning exercise

Is it possible to do? how long would it take for someone relatively new, etc.

<comment><USER19> With all the libraries available for parsing and scraping I suspect this could be recreated very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did craigwatch.com agree to the terms on the site?

<comment><USER21> There's probably a provision in the TOS that says that you implicitly agree to the terms by virtue of using the service. I don't know for sure, just speculating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> mmm

</comment><comment><USER23> Stand up to the MAN!!!

<comment><USER23> Everyone is too law abiding.. But really what laws is he breaking here?? Trademark? Copyright?

Spoke to my legal counsel and I don't see either..

<comment><USER24> Terms of service are a contractual agreement between a service and its users. There's no laws being broken, but it's breach of contract.

Your legal counsel would know that I suspect.

<comment><USER13> click through agreements and terms of service agreements (TOS) are not legally binding contracts. they are used by service providers to provide fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trump's Campaign Said It Was Better at Facebook, and Facebook Agrees - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-03/trump-s-campaign-said-it-was-better-at-facebook-facebook-agrees <comment><USER2> > The paper, obtained by Bloomberg and discussed here for the first time, > describes in granular detail the difference between Trump's campaign, which > was focused on finding new donors, and Clinton's campaign, which > concentrated on ensuring Clinton had broad appeal.

Here is the heart of the matter, sans the latest attempt at naming a scapegoat for Clinton's loss.

A populist candidate focused on leveraging the people who were becoming receptive to his message, while an establishment candidate focused on trying to nudge over people who weren't inherently receptive to her message. That's the whole campaign in a nutshell.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, of course they were. They also made better use of Twitter, and took advantage of the broken clickbait-based news market by generating cheap controversies and using strong language to get free publicity. There's no meme that spreads faster than anger, people love sharing things that make them angry, and it was heavily exploited by this campaign. No matter what you think about his policies, Trump is a master politician that knows how to play his opponents and the media like a fiddle. It's low brow, and it's brutal, but it works.

<comment><USER4> OR... it is possible that people researched the history and positions of the Bush/Clinton dynasties?

<comment><USER5> Possible that people researched something instead of falling victim of confirmation bias and internet memes? Unless you mean by researching something very different than me, you even thinking that is possible makes me guess your sample of "people" is heavily biased.

<comment><USER4> I don't assume people are so easily fooled. Especially by those two families. Take 5 minutes to research the latest creepy front runner (JB). There's not even a chance, but the central news pretends. I think the data (a solid win by an outsider) supports that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not post the paper?

<comment><USER6> I don't believe the numbers. Clinton outspent Trump 2 to 1. She had the most sophisticated ops (including Groundwork (Eric Schmidt-backed startup)). How could Clinton campaign have spent half the other when it was their area of competence ?

<comment><USER7> She outspent Obama too early on.

Trump is a guy who does whatever he can to get attention. Given the pathetic state of the GOP slate and the less than inspirational Hillary campaign... people just needed a little push.

<comment><USER8> Clinton outspent Trump over the entire campaign. Clinton spent $1.18 billion, where Trump spent $617 million.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...](https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential- campaign-fundraising/)

So Clinton outspent Trump by nearly double in the entire election, but according to the article, it was the opposite when regarding Facebook spending.

<comment><USER9> Clinton may spent most money on traditional media channels and wasted her money as described in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr Trump's team tested roughly 90X the variations of ads that Clinton's team did (5.9MM vs 66K), and aggressively utilized Facebook's powerful lookalike audience tool, while Clinton used it for only 4% of her ads. Trump ads also allowed Facebook's ad algorithm to optimize for actions, where Clinton focused on simple exposure.

In other words, Trump's team let the Facebook ads system do its thing, utilizing the same tools that other marketers on the platform use regularly. Hillary's team used it more like a traditional media buy, leaving Facebook's most powerful advertising features largely unused. To the extent that one believes Facebook ads had any effect on the election, this seems to at least partially answer the question of how things ended up where they did.

<comment><USER11> I don't understand why are you downvoted. 5.9M of different ads vs 66K ads, that's ridiculous ratio.

It's more than tenfold difference, and it definitely influences the user engagement down to final conversion, err, sorry, vote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > An internal Facebook white paper

that sounds like an unbiased source

<comment><USER13> I don't think there are sources that are simultaneously privy to details of an issue and unbiased.

(It's the same reason why regulatory capture and other crony clubs can happen entirely organically.)

Edit: The closest thing you can get to an unbiased source is a party that doesn't have a vested interest in the story. Given how Facebook sprawls a lot of interests - business, media, government/politics, culture/sociology, technology - there aren't many parties without bias.

<comment><USER12> could easily be less biased if it was a joint publication from facebook + whoever managed that campaign for trump and clinton. they both have access to those details.</comment></comment></comment>


Rep. Deutch Presents Amendment To Ban Corporate Money From Politics - <AUTHOR> http://www.ology.com/politics/rep-deutch-presents-amendment-ban-corporate-money-politics

<comment><USER2> The only problem with the proposed amendment is that it allows non-profits and only bans for-profit companies.

Excuse me while I go start a non-profit called Elect Ron Paul and give him lots of money. Hey, its legal, right?

</comment><comment><USER3> Problems with this:

1\. The press is exempted. So someone with a lot of money they want to spend promoting a candidate just has to buy a newspaper and push the candidate through the paper.

2\. Section 1, which describes the organizations covered, lists for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, and other private entities stabled for business purposes or to promote business interests. It should not be hard to organize entities that don't fall under that to do your political advocacy.

3\. Sections 2 and 3 refer to section 1 for their definition of the entities covered, so have the same problem described above.

4\. Section 4 does not limit itself to the entities describe earlier. It appears to allow regulation of election expenditures by any entity.

Does that mean they could prohibit me from having a bumper sticker advocating a candidate? Worse, suppose there is some political issue that the incumbents do not wish the public to discuss. All they have to do is put some question related to that on a ballot so that issue is part of an election, then they can regulate all expenditures related to that.

This is simply a horrible proposed amendment. It has too many loopholes, and leaves too much open to interpretation so that it could be used for oppression.

</comment><comment><USER4> According to the article, this is a proposed amendment to ban corporations from making political donations or expenditures. It's not clear from context if that means companies donating to a political campaign, or if it extends to independent expenditures that would influence an election. Let's examine each possibility in turn.

If it just covers donation, then, under current law (which has been upheld by the Supreme Court) corporations may only contribute a maximum of $5,000 per candidate. To put that in context, Obama may raise $1 billion dollars this cycle; the Republican challenger will likely do similarly. Is $5,000 from Exxon or whatever really worth worrying about? (Besides, under Supreme Court precedent, you could probably ban all corporate donations if you wanted, instead of just capping them. Nobody's tried, because honestly, who cares?)

Alternatively, if covers ALL corporate expenditures that may influence an electionm then it would also remove all free speech protections from such things as: The New York Times, Michael Moore's movies, MSNBC, Greenpeace, and more. (Yes, Greenpeace, according the the proposed text of the amendment.) Or rather, they would have free speech protections as long as didn't say anything about any political figure or issue, such as the economy, the environment, or foreign policy.

And that's really the only two options. Either the amendment does absolutely nothing worthwhile (stopping the scourge of Exxon being able to donate $5k to a candidate), or it eviscerates pretty much every vestige of a free press left in America. There's just no way to interpret this as a good idea.

Further, if it DOES stop all corporate expenditures, the only people this amendment would really benefit is the rich. The 99% can't get our message out without the help of other people, banding together to help each other. By removing one of the main ways people group together to get their message out, you muzzle the little guys. But billionaires face NO restrictions! Nothing in the amendment stops the Koch brothers from spending an effectively unlimited amount of money on promoting their favoured candidates and ideas as long as they do it from "personal" funds. What do you call an amendment that stops me from donating to Greenpeace so they can run a pro-solar power ad, but doesn't stop the Koch brothers from running pro-oil ads?)

(Note: I've used left-wing examples as the good guys, and right-wing examples as the bad guys. If it helps, swap them. Consider the damage done to Fox News and the NRA, while it lets George Soros spend with impunity, if that's more alarming. I think this proposed amendment should give everyone something to hate.)</comment>


Ask HN: "Coffee date" etiquette - <AUTHOR> patio11 and other people on HN recommend that instead of just responding to job postings and sending out one's resume, a better way to get a good job is to find hiring managers and meet them over a cup of coffee.
To me this sounds like sound advice. Still, I must admit it would feel a bit weird to ask my peers for their manager's number and then ask the manager if they want to meet, just "out of the blue". Perhaps these customs vary from country to country. (I live in Sweden.)
I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking this. I guess it's just as simple as asking and see who will seize the opportunity? Or is there some "coffee date etiquette" one should be aware of? :) Is it okey to ask someone (my peers) to give out someone else's (the manager's) number?
Also, my occupation is currently not programming, I'm rather targeting sysadmin/application support jobs. <comment><USER3> The purpose of a coffee date is to weed out people who don't drink coffee. You wouldn't want to work with such a freak of nature!

<comment><USER4> You can learn a lot about someone's coffee habits. How much sugar, how much milk. How much... whiskey.

<comment><USER5> Who drinks plain coffee? Latte, espresso, chai - single or double shot - <USER2> or low-fat, the list goes on and on!

<comment><USER6> I'd say about half the people in the Netherlands drink their coffee "gewoon" ("just")! Add too much milk and it's officially "verkeerd" (wrong). As in, coffee machines in petrol stations have a "koffie verkeerd" button, presumably for foreign truckers from far off lands where they spoil their delicious hot beverage with... (blegh) milk.

<comment><USER7> Speaking of spoiling delicious beverages with milk, have you heard what the English do to their tea?

<comment><USER8> If you have tea that strong you are going to want to temper it with some milk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Is it okey to ask someone (my peers) to give out someone else's (the > manager's) number?

I generally get these kinds of invites via either email or LinkedIn. I wouldn't appreciate a cold call.

After that the only etiquette I'd expect is: \- ask to meet close to my office, I will not travel. I usually invite people to the office \- Expect no more than 30 minutes \- You do the running during the meeting - don't expect me to drive the meeting. If it looks like you'd be a fit I'll have my own questions.

I'm Irish/based in Ireland.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think like everyone is kind of saying here, the key is an introduction/intermediary to get your foot in the door. Even if it's just a friend of a friend. Otherwise, you can always try to e-mail out of the blue but calling is probably a little bit too aggressive. The worst thing that could happen is that someone doesn't reply to your e-mail.

Also, I'd be prepared for this meeting to be not just about you getting a job. Come with a lot of interesting questions to ask the person and make it about them and their company. When they ask about you, casually drop that you're looking for a new gig but don't make a big deal about it at all.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a sysadmin manager in the US. Let's suppose that I have a position open (at [http://www.smartleaf.com/careers/](http://www.smartleaf.com/careers/)) and that you think you're qualified for it.

You could send me your resume and a cover letter. This would be impressive, because very few people manage to do this according to my rigorous demands (plain text or PDF, tell me a story about an interesting technical problem you solved).

Or, if you knew someone at the company, you could talk to them and have them talk to me. I will generally trust their opinion enough to set aside time for coffee with you.

<comment><USER12> Job Requirement: "You must be: Clever, competent and kind"

I wish more job descriptions were like this one. Straight and to the point, not much fluff or buzzword padding all over the place.

<comment><USER13> The kindness requirement is awesome and refreshing. I was shocked just how much vitriol gets spewed in an average workplace, directed at customers, fellow employees, inanimate objects. I gravitate towards the people I work with that aren't like that, so specifying 'kindness' right up front is great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't want to speak for patio11 or anyone else, but "meeting over a cup of coffee" shouldn't be thought of as "a way to get a good job", at least directly. It's not a replacement for the interview process, anyway, at least at any place of employment that won't fit into a single meeting room. Instead, it's (a) a social occasion where you can (at least pretend) to (b) learn about the employer or industry. (b) is as in, "what would I need to learn or do to be an interesting employment prospect".

For (a), an introduction from someone you mutually know would be best, but theoretically, a cold-call to the tune of, "I would like to know more about X and Y, would you have a few minutes to talk to me," would be appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER15> The best way to get a job is to get a personal introduction to the hiring manager and build rapport with them. I would not ask for their manager's number. I would ask them to make an introduction. That will carry much more weight. A "Coffee Date" is a common way to have that initial meeting. It is perfectly reasonable to suggest (or have the person introducing you suggest) meeting over coffee. It's just a social nicety that can help break the formality of a first 'interview'.

</comment><comment><USER16> 1\. Find an Introduction 2\. "Do Lunch" or "Do Coffee" don't call it a "date" 3\. Talk about problems that are interesting that you've solved(or that they are solving) 4\. ??? 5\. Profit!

</comment><comment><USER17> Ask your peer for an introduction. It's always much better to be introduced by someone the manager knows or respects than via a cold-call. (It plays on association fallacy in your favor)

If you don't know anyone who knows the manager, find their contact information and contact them, informing them you're very interested in the position they have open and you would love to discuss it over coffee. It's not "out of the blue" because they have been looking for someone to fill a position, and you are that someone.

Also, keep in mind that some hiring managers may ignore you or put off meeting/interviewing you until you bug them enough. I was kept in limbo for a couple months once because I was afraid of being "pushy" while they were basically waiting me out.

</comment><comment><USER18> I always give the same answer to questions regarding social etiquette/propriety: just be normal. Seriously, you're overthinking it. Just be a normal person. Make people comfortable, help them get what they want, and smile. That's all you need. If you think something is weird, it probably is, purely because you'll make it weird by thinking that. Would you want to go on a coffee date with someone who was worried it was a weird thing to do?

Dale Carnegie knew what he was talking about. In general, if you treat people like people, you'll do well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great advice!

I've seen PG/YC recommend _How to Win Friends and Influence People_ from time to time, so I should probably get myself a copy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have had a lot of current/potential candidates ask me to get coffee and I usually avoid it unless a) they come highly recommended from someone I trust and/or b) they appear to be exceptionally qualified. Unless one or both of those are met, I think the meetings are more often than not a waste of time unfortunately. However, if it's someone who comes recommended from someone I trust and appears to be a great fit for a role we are hiring now or in the future, I'll jump at the opportunity to meet and prioritize that.

</comment><comment><USER20> How common is it to have a peer who can introduce you to a hiring manager? I have plenty of friends, and none can get me a meeting with a hiring manager at a good company. Most of my friends are unemployed or working at Panera Bread.

Any advice?

<comment><USER21> > How common is it to have a peer who can introduce you to a hiring manager?

I haven't gotten a job in the last... six or seven years _without_ an introduction.

> Most of my friends are unemployed or working at Panera Bread.

Only one of my friends - as in, someone I'd meet for a pint - works in my field. Don't sweat that.

But I've got plenty of other developers I keep in touch with to varying degrees.

> Any advice?

Make a list of every person you've worked with in the past, or work with right now. Ask yourself one simple question: if you were sitting in your office and your manager walked in and says "Hey normloman, I just got foobar's resume, and you used to work with them! Are they any good?"

If your answer wouldn't be immediately "hell yeah!", cross their name off the list. Don't hedge, don't equivocate.

Now you've got a list of people that you trust, and if you're a decent worker, odds are most of them feel the same way about you.

The next time you're looking to switch jobs, pull out that list. Send each one of them a quick email/Linkedin/Facebook message/text/whatever that just says "hey, I'm looking to make a change, do you know anyone that's hiring?"

That's pretty much it. And be available for anyone that asks you the same question, because you gotta keep your karma in check ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The idea is that you area always better off if you have a personal connection to a human being.

Most hiring managers would be thrilled to be introduced to someone talented who comes recommended by someone they trust.

The point of having coffee is to have an informal chat which allows for lots of information exchange without the formality of an interview (for either party).

Also, you get a good sense of things like culture fit and interests, which can often make a big impact on hiring decisions.

In addition, that you want to get to know the manager is a good sign that you take your career seriously and want to work somewhere only if it's a very good fit.

People who already have a great job don't make knee-jerk career decisions. Doing a coffee signals that.

</comment><comment><USER23> As everyone else has mentioned, ask your peers to introduce you directly to the manager. A couple of things:

Include a brief but enticing paragraph on why you are awesome. It makes it a lot easier for the "intro-er" to forward or reword it.

Be respectful of the other's time. Depending on the company and job, some people really welcome a break for coffee for a potential hire or an interesting person; others are swamped, and the triviality of a "coffee date" will be easy to turn down. Try to gauge which this is.

Coffee meetings can be take, take, take. Try to give back. Maybe you have something the other could learn?

</comment><comment><USER24> It's fine to ask for a coffee meeting if you want to learn more about an industry, position, or the company.

Hiring, and interviewing is as much about mutual likeablitily as it is skills and qualifications. You can always train for skill and knowledge more than you can train for attitude.

Another thing to remember is as more medium and large companies start to use applicant tracking systems, they generally filter out very good people who don't happen to have the right keywords in their resume that they upload.

Standing out will become more important in those cases.

Ultimately, while what you know is important, who you know can help.

</comment><comment><USER25> At least in the US, discussing coffee date etiquette usually carries the context of meeting a potential partner. Not so much regarding a relationship establishment for a job. Not to say that this would be frowned-upon, just unusual.

I think that if the two parties are in very near vicinity of each other, meeting over coffee could be a nice replacement for the typical first phone interview (finding out the prospect's experience/aspirations/etc.). I also feel like one would get more responses to these inquiries in Silicon Valley as opposed to, say, the Northeast.

</comment><comment><USER26> There is the concept of an informational interview -- meeting over coffee to ask about a person's job/industry/company -- but that is distinct from meeting a hiring manager. It may be as effective in the job hunt, although it is not as direct. Consider it, though, as it may be more informative to talk to someone who does a job you'd like to do at a company you're interested in. If that person then recommends you to the hiring manager, you're in a nice position.

</comment><comment><USER27> Also having some pretext for the date helps I think; asking for advice on how to get a job for the role you're interested, better understanding the company culture and working practices or advice for some other particular situation could all be good reasons to meet. Setting out the reason for the date (in your email response to the email introduction) will make it more likely that your request will be taken up.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd personally prefer a nice personal sounding email than a cold call from someone I don't know, but it's not that big a deal. I've gotten "out of the blue" requests like this before and I usually say yes. If the request came via an employee, I'd _definitely_ say yes.

</comment><comment><USER29> I agree that it would be weird to call the hiring manager "out of the blue"—I would ask for an introduction, rather than a phone number. If your friend is a bit introverted, have them introduce you via email, then respond with a (very short) bit about who you are and what your motivation is.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm also based in Sweden. I would recommend you attend to any meetup.com you are interested in. The organizers are usually scouting. If you talk to people and discuss the presentation (many don't) you'll get fika invites instead of asking for them!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds very good. I've been impressed by how many interesting and IT-related Meetup events there are in Stockholm.

<comment><USER30> If you are interested in Ops you should consider the Docker meetups. I hear they are very good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I should try to make it there some day. Feel free to ping me if you find any other interesting meetups :) (See my profile for contact info.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Still, I must admit it would feel a bit weird to ask my peers for their > manager's number and then ask the manager if they want to meet, just "out of > the blue".

That would be strange. Wouldn't you get your friend, the intermediary, to set up the "date?"

</comment><comment><USER32> The normal way to do it is just to drop an email to a relevant person, set a context and ask if they'd be willing to meet for coffee.

Although if you already know someone in common you could do it more casually (i.e. join them for after work drinks).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sooo much good advice here! Thanks to everyone who has responded. This is very useful for me and hopefully for other readers as well.

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't turn HN into Reddit.</comment>


Scandal: U.S. embassy in Cairo is stealing taxpayers funds - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I am a startup founder from cairo, Egypt.
I read an ad about a trip to silicon valley funded by the US state department and sponsored by U.S. embassy in Cairo. It's a j1 visa exchange program trip.
when I called them on their landline in the ad, they responded on phone that there is no trip.
I made a Facebook post, and then they called me back apologizing, saying it was a mistake, and there is a trip.
I researched to see who traveled in previous years,and found out that those who traveled are all rich kids with a ton of money who don't need or meet the criteria for such funded exchange trips that are mainly targeting people with less opportunity to travel.
It's interesting how much corrupted are your embassies abroad, wasting the American people money on their friends! <comment><USER2> My friend that is how the world works...everyone helps and works for the rich. Why are you complaining about US, complain about your government who put you in need for others.</comment>


VSCode is not an IDE, prove me wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=vscode+is+shit <comment><USER2> While I agree with VSCode not being a IDE (But only an editor), one thing for sure is that if you Google for "VSCode is shit" on Google, you will get results and opinions/reactions from those who say it is 'shit', which is the OP's own confirmation bias and is what they only want you to see to 'prove their argument' which is really fallacious.

Come back and link a balanced discussion or article rather than results that are one sided with your own bias.

</comment><comment><USER3> Gatekeeping is an immature practice of semi-skilled people that have too much free time and not enough motivation.

And what is it about a program being an IDE or not makes it good or bad? I bet a bunch of immature Smalltalk users would happily tell you that IntelliJ or Visual Studio aren't IDEs.</comment>


Diamonds Suck (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://diamondssuck.com/ <comment><USER2> > If I can prevent a single reader from needlessly dropping $6,000-10,000+ on > a diamond engagement ring, this site will be a success. Financial worries > are the #1 cause of stress in a married relationship - there is absolutely > NO excuse to start your married life by taking on that level of debt.

Average U.S. wedding cost $30k in 2014, while the average engagement ring was $5600, or 19% of the cost [0]

[https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-cost-of- wedding](https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-cost-of-wedding)

While reducing/eliminating the cost of the ring is a big saving, the entire wedding industry is a shocking way to start your marriage (especially given about half will end in divorce)

<comment><USER3> Not everything is about money though. Want to have an extravagant wedding? Fine. Want something basic? Also fine.

Yes: diamonds, jewellery, mechanical watches etc are all bad value for money. People don't buy them because they're bad value. They buy them because they like wearing them, and women buy jewellery because it makes them feel pretty.

That's life. It's fine throwing money away sometime.

<comment><USER4> Yes, you're right. I don't understand the myopia on this forum when it comes to people spending money irrationally. Human beings are not hyper-efficient savings maximization engines. Every time the story about why "diamonds suck" hits the front page (maybe once a year or so?), the same rounds of patting-on- the-back are exchanged in the comments for rehashing a one-dimensional social commentary that buying diamonds is silly.

Yes of course it's silly! But that's not the point, and it never has been. Once you're at the point of buying a gift that costs far more than its intrinsic, utilitarian value, worrying about its "true scarcity" is just haggling on the details. I purchased an engagement ring for my wife that costed about $30,000. She didn't ask for anything remotely as extravagant as that, but she likes it and I enjoy it for frankly vain reasons. I take immense pleasure out of the reactions it elicits from other people. Despite being very clear-eyed about the artificial scarcity of diamonds and DeBeers marketing, I still bought it because I enjoyed being able to make a frivolous purchase. Personally I don't like spending a lot on things that aren't either experiential or somewhat long-lasting, so I'd never spend much at all on a wedding dress. But I don't begrudge people for spending money inefficiently if they can afford it.

We're all the same species. With very few exceptions, none of us is hyper- vigilant, hyper-rational or hyper-efficient. There are many, many things we idly buy which are artificially scarce or inflated in price. Buying them is not categorically different from buying expensive jewelry under a cultural zeitgeist perpetuated by a global conglomerate. I think most people really don't have much self-awareness about how high their floor of wealth and personal spending is over the ceiling of frugality and efficiency they talk about so much.

<comment><USER5> Are you an entrepreneur with a profitable business or successful exit?

If not, 30K might represent 6-12 months of personal runway to build your own business.

<comment><USER3> He's not going to buy his wife a $30k engagement ring if he's earning $30k a year...

<comment><USER5> You don't save 100% of what you earn.

50% is considered very good, but in consumer focused America some people might save only 10% of their income (thus for a 100K income to save 30K represents 3 years of savings obliterated).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the difference between a diamond and an expensive handbag or other accessory?

If a thing is worth what people pay, how come diamonds are a scam and other items not?

I have a hard time grasping this everytime an anti-diamond article pops up. I can see the logic in not using that kind of money on a ring, but not what's so special about the price/scarcity/fashion of diamonds compared to other luxury goods.

<comment><USER3> Just another guy pointing out WHY they're a ripoff. Most luxury goods are "ripoffs" (from a financial point of view). Yet plenty of people love buying luxury items for the feeling it gives them and the experience, and because the item (in comparison to a non luxury item) is still much better.

Nothing wrong with that in my view. Personally I don't share they view they're a ripoff, but to each their own.

Have you ever bought a mechanical watch? I have, and I loved the experience -- from researching and exploring it, to visiting a few jewellers, to getting a good deal, to finally getting the item. I look forward to the day when I can buy my (to be) wife amazing pieces of jewellery, regardless of the price.

<comment><USER7> _Yet plenty of people love buying luxury items for the feeling it gives them_

For me that is the huge rip-off next to the financial part: for a lot of these luxury items the extra money doesn't get you proportionally more or better functionality nor quality (2 things which are imo actually worth money since they give you something practical and useful back). It's often more about looks and how it feels. But do the people really care about the looks themselves, or rather how they are perceived by others? And is that really worth pursuing? And does buying a feeling really work and how long does this feeling last? Also is the feeling 'real' or is it just made-up in the end because culture tells you it's like that?

<comment><USER3> Why would it be a rip off? You act as if 'overcharging' for something is always a rip off. If I'm walking in a desert without water.. I'll likely be billing to pay (a lot) more than if I had a bottle with me.

Luxury goods often have more price elasticity compared to other items, but they still deliver value to the people buying them. Not that you need an entire Louis Vuitton collection, but splurging can be fun. It's really not your call to make whether spending on luxury items is worth pursuing -- depends on how high your income and wealth is.

Also: perception is everything in the world. Someone who is well dressed is generally taken more seriously than the same person in a hoodie and wearing sweatpants.

<comment><USER7> _You act as if 'overcharging' for something is always a rip off._

Syntactically those 2 terms indeed have a similar feel to them - 'over' doesn't have a good connotation in 'overcharging'. But I'm not sure why you think I consider them to always be equivalent, I don't.

 _they still deliver value to the people buying them_

It's exactly the worth of that (perceived) value I was questioning.

 _It 's really not your call to make whether spending on luxury items is worth pursuing -- depends on how high your income and wealth is._

You're not claiming I cannot take part in this discussion if my income isn't high enough, are you :] Anyway, rest assured: my income and wealth are such that I could buy more than a bunch of VT bags or rings with diamonds or whatever. Even more I'm no stranger to having bought overpriced luxury items in a distant past so I kind of know what I'm questioning here. Ha, it's exactly the reason I'm questioning it. But even if it were not why would I not be allowed to ask questions about other's motives?

 _Also: perception is everything in the world_

Correction: a part of the world. A part which is way too big for my liking and for which I consider myself extremely fortunate I don't have to deal with it often. I want to be taken serious for who I am and not because of what I look like. Also: one can look well dressed (to whatever standard) in clothes which don't cost a dime so there's a fine line between 'well dressed' and 'expensively dressed so it must be well'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, what's all the fuss with engagement rings in the first place? When me and my wife got engaged, I gave her nothing (nor did she expect anything), just asked her to marry me and she agreed, we kissed and that was it.

We did, however, made wedding rings, which together were about $1300, but that's because they were made out of gold.

Why overcomplicate things? :)

<comment><USER9> Our engagement rings trace back to Middle Ages Europe, where they arose to serve a notice function (this person is taken). Diamonds became associated with them in the Victorian era, and became more widespread when ordinary people started copying the trappings of nobility (diamond engagement rings, college, etc.).

<comment><USER10> I was told a story that the concept originated before this, as a subtle way to identify acolytes of a certain religious order or place of worship in ancient times. The phrase used was "temple prostitutes". I've searched a bit and had trouble finding a source to back this up, though. If anyone has one or can debunk it, I'd be happy either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a sidenote, the rings with diamonds thing is mostly an American fad.

All people i know in Germany have just plain gold rings.

It is way nicer because it is more a symbol of commitment than a show of wealth.

Those never get out of style, can hardly be damaged and if need be can be replaced cheaply.

<comment><USER12> Those are wedding bands. Engagement rings more often feature diamonds or other gems. Wedding bands rarely do indeed (in Western Europe anyway).

<comment><USER13> I can't speak of Germany but in France engagement rings are very rare and more something of the upper class, out of all the weddings I've done, none of them did that.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't say that engagement rings are upper class, but it's true it's only in certain groups. In my peer group, it's common, for example my brother bought one for his fiancée and my mom has one. But in all case they were gifted at the time of the engagement, not at the wedding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unfortunately this is one of those American traditions we love to hate but are for the moment powerless to change. Your significant other may not care but societal pressure and expectation is hard to get around. She has a mother, sisters, friends etc. It is the same reason an expensive handbag makes absolutely no sense to a man but matters so much to a woman. It is confounding.

<comment><USER16> Powerless? No. Just don't buy it. It really is that simple. You don't have to change everyone's mind. Just stand up for yourself.

<comment><USER17> And say goodbye to the girl of your dreams, who was really looking forward to showing her friends the "rock" on her finger and hearing them ooh and ahh over it.

Even if she doesn't leave you over this, unless you somehow married a Hackernews you've set up the image in her head that you're a skinflint who isn't willing to provide for your wife and it _will_ affect your relationship in negative ways. Is your autism that strong that you will put a pedantic commitment to your own head logic and fighting the evil forces of marketing above your wife's feelings? If so, maybe you don't deserve to be married.

<comment><USER16> No need to baselessly suggest autism. There are people who don't care about these things. Find one of them. It's not hard. I've known several.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Isn't it amazing (and scary) how brainwashed people are about the "value" of > diamonds, even though they're not actually worth that much?

It seems to me that the same strategy is curently used in the crypto ecosystem.

<comment><USER19> I was wondering to myself "what are the diamonds of the HN crowd?" and found you've answered my question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If your marriage being successful, fulfilling and happy depends on a chunk of expensive rock and/or metal, you'd better not get married.

<comment> GuB-42 It is not about the object itself, it is about respecting your partner's values. If an expensive ring means a lot to your partner, then it is definitely important for your marriage.

The same can be said for extramarital sex. Assuming proper precautions are taken to avoid medical issues, rationally, it is not a big deal. And yet, besides a small minority of couples who embrace open marriage, this is hugely important.

If requiring some compromise warrants not getting married, no one will ever get married.

<comment><USER21> It's also a measure of the value of your partner's personality. A SO which needs me to communicate in $$$ is the last thing I'd ever want in my life. It's a glaring symptom of a shallow personality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464)

</comment><comment><USER23> People who buy engagements rings are simply spending lots of money as an expression of love and providing visible proof of that to other people. I don't think that's a great idea but everybody's different. So the value of diamonds is somewhat irrelevant.

<comment><USER24> You could do that without mined diamonds and all its negative consequences.

<comment><USER23> Yeah big time. But you can say that about a lot of things. Point I'm making is that if people want to consume ridiculous things the current system we live under kind of favours that. If it isn't diamonds then it's going to be some other crap that requires other people to live lives of utter drudgery. That's kind of the point. If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a Jimmy Choo stamping on a human face forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The weirdest aspect about diamonds is they are not even that pretty. Plenty of other gems are much more beautiful for a lot less money.

</comment><comment><USER26> For German readers, I really recommend the following podcast episode about diamonds:

[https://cre.fm/cre218-diamanten](https://cre.fm/cre218-diamanten)

</comment><comment><USER27> Another option: second hand diamonds, which diamond merchants will tell you don't exist. People die, if they don't pass their stones onto their children, this is where they end up.

Sotheby's jewelly auctions. Know what you want, buy stones and ignore settings (they'll be dated and you can sell the metals), and know you're the only retail customer in a room full of diamond merchants.

Another option: get a house deposit and work on building an eventual family with your woman rather than provide her with trinkets.

<comment><USER28> How easy/hard is it to extract diamonds from these old settings and get a new setting for it? Where would one even go to get a diamond placed in a new setting?

<comment><USER27> Easy. If you have the stone you can get a new setting (and the stone placed in it) at most high/main street jewellers. Everyone who reuses their family stones gets this done, so the jeweller won't mind doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Anybody know anything about this "Moissanite" thing?

I find it interesting that in the 100+ comments here, there's no mention of the item the linked website so heavily promotes, yet I personally never heard of until now. One of the reasons I love HN is that usually relevant knowledge and experience will come out of woodworks and share their wisdom - so, anybody ever heard of "Moissanite"? :)

<comment><USER30> Moissanite is another name for Silicon Carbide - it's often used as a diamond 'lookalike' in jewelry, as it's much cheaper to produce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There are many people crafting software with category theory, refactoring it 10 times a week, using whatever latest JS framework is the trend, then asking for a price.

Most of it might mean absolutely nothing to a customer. But you think the price you charge is fair.

Don't conflate the efforts you put, with that actual value of your product.

Many software might have the same utility as of a diamond and may have the same price as a diamond.

</comment><comment><USER32> I always thought of the engagement ring tradition as a financial safety-net for a woman, in a culture where it was customary that only men work and women stay home. Woman in such setup has no "her" money, but if she owns an expensive ring that she can easily sell that gives her some level of freedom, if needed.

<comment><USER33> Its an interesting theory, but falls apart in practice. The parent article mentions the abysmal resell value of diamonds.

Ignoring the advertisement at the end, this article sums things up pretty well: [https://www.diamonds.pro/education/sell- diamonds/](https://www.diamonds.pro/education/sell-diamonds/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Nothing says "Marry me! Marry someone who wastes lots of your shared money!" like a diamond.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've always found it fascinating how powerful DeBeers' marketing is, considering that in nature gems like rubies and sapphires are much rarer than diamonds yet are worth considerably less.

</comment><comment><USER36> If you think that solely the physical properties of the stone are what matters then you dont understand the point of an engagement ring.

<comment><USER37> Well, I do understand the point of an engagement ring - what I am completely flummoxed by is the idea that you should spend a huge chunk of money on one.

I got my wife an eternity ring as an engagement ring - not because of any rules but because we both liked it and it wasn't very expensive. Been married 27 years so far so it seems to have worked! ;-)

<comment><USER38> > Been married 27 years so far so it seems to have worked!

As I like to joke with my wife, it's not a successful marriage until one of us dies.

As for rings, we didn't do an engagement ring, and my wife's ring contains a sapphire mined from our home state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> moissanite.net redirects to some diamond jeweler's site now. Any idea what happened to that domain?

</comment><comment><USER40> People who are against diamonds seem extremely aggressive about making sure other people agree with them and validate their opinions.

I can't imagine making a website about any of my jewellery preferences (short of ethical, which isn't mentioned prominently here).

<comment><USER14> Well it's like vegans. Except here instead of animal suffering, it's human suffering; which can give a greater sense of importance to the cause. And in turn, it would make people against diamonds feels justified to be more aggressive.

<comment><USER40> The human suffering part is pretty far down this person's list of complaints against diamonds.

Their principle problems are price and marketing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> If I might ask, why was this flagged? It was last discussed in 2016 [0], and though it needs a [2006] tag, it is otherwise a really valid and interesting post.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464)

<comment><USER42> I wondered the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I know I will get a hell of downvotes for this, but "Brainwashed" term can also be applied to people trading Bitcoins? Some people agreed that it is valuable and gave some tokens a huge value and its a market now.

<comment><USER44> Diamond prices are artificially inflated by a single organization. Bitcoin is priced by the market.

(Yes, there is lots of manipulation in the latter, but it's still not comparable to diamonds.)

<comment><USER45> Wrong. The DeBeers monopoly doesn't exist anymore and the market sets the prices on diamonds. Nearly all diamonds are priced through auctions now a days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yes, this post missing the point that I as a diamond buyer already know this but it will not stop me from purchasing more diamonds.

In a hypothetical world, if a diamond could be bought for $10K and sold for $10K, where is the risk? Then it's no longer for only rich, others can take a loan from a bank and purchase diamonds.

When I pay for a diamond, I don't pay for its intrinsic value. I pay for diamonds because other people around me feel they are expensive and you've to be rich enough to set your money on fire (like you do while purchasing a diamond). It's a signal for others that I am "fuck you money" rich.

The very same reason for which I purchase a sports car, yes a sports car does have some advanced engineering but the resale value is not same.

As long as diamond purchase price stays up I'll keep buying. Only thing I want is that no other people are able to acquire them for cheap when I am willing to pay a premium. (I hate price discrimination, i've also worked hard for my money, why should anyone get them cheap?)

Please stop treating me like a victim of De Beers campaign.

<comment><USER46> _When I pay for a diamond, I don 't pay for its intrinsic value. I pay for diamonds because other people around me feel they are expensive and you've to be rich enough to set your money on fire (like you do while purchasing a diamond). It's a signal for others that I am "fuck you money" rich._

This may have been a sarcastic post (?) but why do you care if other people think you have "fuck you money"? That just makes you look intellectually weak and poor imho.

But here's one thing that "fuck you money" won't buy: class.

<comment><USER31> > This may have been a sarcastic post (?) but why do you care if other people > think you have "fuck you money"? That just makes you look intellectually > weak and poor imho. But here's one thing that "fuck you money" won't buy: > class.

Why should I care if that makes me look intellectually weak and poor imho? I am from old banker family, I love diamonds and I collect them. I gave you other reasons for which I collect all these diamonds.

If you ask me in an interview, I obviously won't mention these views and give you a politically correct answer. But this is the internet, I am using anonymity, where is the problem with that?

I am just sharing my views, I don't care about your judgment.

> But here's one thing that "fuck you money" won't buy: class.

I am born into it, there is no reason for me to buy.

<comment><USER21> > I am born into it, there is no reason for me to buy.

What a self-annihilating affirmation this is! A fucking _gem_ :) You're rich and hilarious!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


YouTube Myth Busting - <AUTHOR> http://ytbizblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/youtube-myth-busting.html

<comment><USER2> "The world premiere of Joy Luck Club director Wayne Wang's film, "The Princess of Nebraska," was viewed 165,000+ times during the first 48 hours -- the equivalent of landing the 15th spot on Hollywood box office charts."

Yeah, if movie theaters were free and instead of you going to them, they came to you. If there's an "equivalent" to 165,000 tickets on an opening weekend of a Hollywood movie, it's probably closer to 165,000,000 page views. And that's in how much revenue is generated--for the production company, a film playing in an actual cinema would rake in more than a YouTube release of equivalent revenue, because your local movie theater makes almost nothing on ticket sales while YouTube probably makes a significant percentage of ad revenue. It's not like YouTube can give all ad revenue to content creators and sell overpriced popcorn and soda, after all.

<comment><USER3> I think that the benefits of price (free) and availability (theater comes to you) are only likely to increase movies watched via YouTube. Once a movie does have 165M page views in an opening weekend (and one will), which will be a better measure of movie performance: the box office or Google?

<comment><USER4> That depends on the movie, harry potter pulled in _139.7M over its Wednesday- to-Sunday debut period._ I don't see free with advertising adding enough people to make close to that much money.

However, a movie like _clerks_ could be vary profitable online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been moderated straight into the ground for this previously, but google does not nearly pay for bandwidth what you'd be quoted if you went shopping for bandwidth.

At a 5G commit you're down to $4/Mbit, over that it gets quite a bit cheaper still.

Youtube is consuming thousands of times that quantity.

(the 5Gbit/sec will serve out 10K streams @600Kbps)

Another good trick they pull is to cache videos that are requested frequently in or very near to the colocation offered by the larger ISPs.

<comment><USER6> Yup, they peer at local internet exchanges (e.g. LINX in London - www.linx.net / INEX in Ireland - www.inex.ie), cache locally where they can (uk.youtube.com / ie.youtube.com are what you get redirected to periodically over here) and I would imagine that this drastically reduces their "internet" bandwidth consumption.

<comment><USER7> I use the O2 ISP and I often notice that if I stream a popular video from YouTube (or anything from the BBC iPlayer) my browser will tell me it's "transferring data from" an IP address which is in my ISP's own range. It must be cheaper for them to cache popular content within the ISP system and send it out that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _These myths are officially busted._

No they aren't. Myths are busted with science and testing and experimentation. All this article did was contradict the myths. It did nothing to show the truth or falseness of the claims.

If you are going to use something like the high quality show, Mythbusters, to model your contradictions, you should learn something about science from the show and actually prove whether or not your contradiction is true.

This post didn't even come close to doing that.

<comment><USER9> "It did nothing to show the truth or falseness of the claims."

This is a primary source. If YouTube says that more traffic makes YouTube more money, nobody else is in a position to contradict them.

I believe that lying about that in public could have legal repercussions.

<comment><USER10> I'm with the parent poster. The myths are not busted until some hard facts come out.

There are artful ways to say true things that make the reader jump to conclusions that they intend, but are false.

For instance, by claiming that they are in a position that growth is good, they make us think they are making profit per view, but that isn't what they said. They could have any number of non-profitable reasons to like growth, like strategic market share or building a huge content database.

Further, their refutation that advertisers are not afraid of YouTube may lead some readers to conclude that 70% of Ad Age Top 100 Marketers are paying YouTube directly, whereas many (most?) are not. They are either using YouTube as part of a social media campaign or advertising within some user content hosted on YouTube.

It's not clear at all what's happening on their balance sheet, so speculation will continue. To what end, I don't know, but after "What is Twitter's business model?", guessing how much money YouTube burns a year is the Valley's favourite party game. ;)

<comment><USER9> "I'm with the parent poster. The myths are not busted until some hard facts come out."

If you adopt this position, then even "hard facts" won't satisfy you, since, again, they'd have to come from YouTube, a source you don't trust.

To be honest, that's the position I'm in; I don't trust them on this point, though I don't particularly care, either. I quite carefully didn't say that the claims are true in their most obvious form, merely that this is _as good as it is going to get_ for now, and in particular, that there is no applicable "science and testing and experimentation" to be done.

<comment><USER10> I would say we agree except to note that YouTube is owned by a public company, so it may make substantial disclosures at a future time that are subject to audit. That's not exactly the same thing as taking its word for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like this one:

"Myth 5: YouTube is only monetizing 3-5% of the site. This oft-cited statistic is old and wrong, and continues to raise much speculation. In our view, the percentage is far less important than the total number of monetized views..."

They say it's old and wrong, but don't give the real percent, and spin in terms of "total number of monetized views". Based on this answer I'd guess the percent of monetized views isn't much higher than the "myth", otherwise they'd have a better spin.

</comment><comment><USER12> What I'm curious about is why they bothered to do the myth busting. What's the motivation to do this?

If everyone thinks even the mighty Google can't get YouTube to break even, then no one else will try to compete with them in video, and when they get around to figuring out how to make money, they will own the entire whole short video market.

Meanwhile, Google overall remains a desirable place to work in the eyes of many engineers. And Youtube advertisers care about how effective their ads are relative to what it's costing them, not whether or not Google is making money from Youtube. There may be some concern over the long-term availability of Youtube as an advertising channel if it's not making money, but do you need to think about that when you need to run an ad campaign right now?

So I mean, I don't really believe all the spin either, but why tell anyone else otherwise? They don't certainly aren't out to raise funding either...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Fairly short post, the interesting bit:

 _Myth 3: Traffic, growth, and uploads are bad for YouTube's bottom line. There's been a lot of speculation lately about how much it costs to run YouTube. With revenue estimates ranging from $120 million to $500 million, and costs on an equally large spectrum, it seems people can pick any number to fit any theory they have about our business. The truth is that all our infrastructure is built from scratch, which means models that use standard industry pricing are too high when it comes to bandwidth and similar costs. We are at a point where growth is definitely good for our bottom line, not bad._

</comment><comment><USER13> How is bandwidth pricing built from scratch? You're transferring bits like everyone else. Sure you might be doing it CHEAPER, but they didn't rewrite the rules to peering.

These myths aren't "busted," they just refuted reported numbers with "that ain't true!"

<comment><USER14> It very well may be different, since Google bought a ton of dark fiber a few years back. They may be running their own network over to whomever wants to peer with them (Read: everyone!). They can get away with free bandwidth because a lot of providers will let them connect for free if they're able to bring the bits directly to their network, not via transit with some other provider that's costing both sides money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> With awesome hits like "Worlds Apart", "CHIC.TV Models", and "Spin Cycle", it won't be long before I ditch the old cable box for YouTube!*

*Just kidding YouTube. I love you, and I know you'll get better stuff than old "Starsky and Hutch" episodes any day now.

<comment><USER16> YouTubes current obstacle to getting better content is going to be Hulu which a large number of major content providers have a monetary interest in.

<comment><USER17> YouTube can then look at taking content to international markets (as opposed to the U.S-only Hulu), which make up a fairly decent chunk of their viewership..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> most of the stuff doesn't play for me in NZ so we're still a ways from upload- once-play-anywhere</comment>


Apple won't allow iPhones to downgrade from iOS 13.5.1 to iOS 13.5 - <AUTHOR> https://androidrookies.com/apple-wont-allow-its-users-to-downgrade-their-iphones-from-ios-13-5-1-to-ios-13-5/ <comment><USER2> That's unfortunate for the jailbreaking community (as mentioned in the article, 13.5.1 patches out the kernel exploit used by unc0ver to jailbreak). It's a shame Apple has to be so hostile to its users. I got my SE1 for the express purpose of jailbreaking when it was no longer supported by updates; I get the perks of having a customizable media player with a headphone jack with none of the downsides (cheap build quality) that plague the MP3 players on Amazon, plus I can use it as a smartphone too. I guess until the community manages to crack 13.5.1 - or, even better, whatever iOS version formally marks the end of the iPhone SE1 and 6S's support - users will just have to wait.

I jailbroke on 13.5 with unc0ver and it really is worth it, even nowadays. It opens up a world of customization and lower-level system utilities. It's a shame the tools to do so don't work with Linux - in order to keep the apps on your phone you need to "refresh" them using AltStore, which only works on macOS and Windows - but I believe the jailbreak patches your phone so that it no longer automatically updates iOS, so you don't just end up with a brick when Apple pushes a new one.</comment>


How Much Is Music Really Worth? - <AUTHOR> http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/9628-how-much-is-music-really-worth/ <comment><USER2> How much is a painting really worth?

It depends who painted it. It will also depend on the art collector. I'm not a big fan of Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' and wouldn't pay a dime for a copy. But I might pay $50 to commission an artist for a semi-professional sketch of one of my favorite TV show characters.

Few people would place the same value on the commissioned art. Most would consider it worthless!

What do paintings and music both have in common? Both are artforms. Both are heavily reliant on subjective taste. Someone might be willing to pay $15 for a Taylor Swift album but wouldn't pay $3 for a Slipknot album.

The problem with the music industry is they try to price all music more-or- less equally. All singles, regardless who made it, are about $1.00 nowadays. But are all songs worth $1? If an album has 10 tracks is it worth $10 or $12? Would someone buy an album if they only actually listen to 2 of the songs? Why buy an album for $12 if they only like $2 worth of the songs?

If I buy the song on iTunes how many hoops do I have to jump through to put that song on my Android phone? The distribution and control over the music favors the pirate.

Few people want to order physical CD's because they then have to burn/import the tracks onto their computer to access the music on their mp3 players/phones. But if they purchase the CD online, through iTunes, they don't actually own the music! They also get locked into the Apple Ecosystem (see earlier point about Android).

As for Streams vs Radio. Radio playing the song 16 times might reach 1,000,000 listeners in New York. A stream playing a song 16 times likely reached only 16 people (if only a handful more). So charging "per time the song is played" is not the correct model if the song is reaching significantly less amount of people per time played.

TL;DR Distribution is the largest problem. The next largest problem is the market model. The last problem is art is inherently worthless and is only given value by a person - and that value changes per person.</comment>


Show HN: HN User Tagger – helps keep track of users with tags - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momento-for-hacker-news/ldamdlljpkkejoiohakbapncdjfolgfh?ref=s <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all! I built this on a long flight home. Inspired by flair on Reddit. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.</comment>


NASA Study Proposes Airships, Cloud Cities for Venus Colonization (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/nasa-study-proposes-airships-cloud-cities-for-venus-exploration <comment><AUTHOR> This older study (2003) provides excellent, succinct background:

Colonization of Venus by Geoffrey A. Landis

[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/200300...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030022668.pdf)

 _Although the surface of Venus is an extremely hostile environment, at about 50 kilometers above the surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earthlike environment (other than Earth itself) in the solar system._

</comment><comment><USER2> I find this more interesting than flying to Mars. Pretty cool.</comment>


What We Eat Affects Everything - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/what-we-eat-affects-everything/279922/ <comment><USER2> The moment you read toxins and detox in any article for mass consumption - stop bother reading further - the author is at best a quack.

<comment><USER3> If you actually read the article, the doctor they interviewed is perfectly reasonable and clearly knows what she is talking about. I came in expecting the usual quackery and was pleasantly surprised, this is real doctor whose specialty is Crohn's and Celiac disease.

<comment><USER4> I did read that article, and was still disappointed.

This is health 'lite', with ten day quick fixes, beauty tips and doctors telling otherwise healthy people to 'stay off the gluten'.

<comment><USER5> Are you sure you read it? She says the ten day thing is to show people some results so they understand that the process actually does something, but that it's not meant as a ten day fix at all. She also says it's important not just to skip gluten for the hell of it, but to see if you're actually getting anything positive out of that and using that knowledge to make an informed decision. I didn't see anything in the article at all that could be considered a beauty tip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it just me or do the pictures of her look like her face has been heavily airbrushed? That's a bit ironic considering...

<comment><USER7> I don't get the irony, maybe you mean hypocritical, but I don't see that either. She isn't advocating being comfortable with your body as given to you, nor is she saying we shouldn't wear makeup. She's saying you should eat healthy most of the time.</comment></comment>


This is why I act like a man - <AUTHOR> http://baglady.dreamhosters.com/2008/05/25/this-is-why-i-act-like-a-man/ Do women in science and technology have to act like men to succeed? <comment><USER2> Started to read, things kept popping up over the article as my mouse cursor crossed the window. Gave up and left. I wonder if those "services" that deface articles provide a report of how many people leave the page within 5 seconds of the first pop up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depending on the circumstances, I am happy to use either men or women as role models. Where role models fail, I must be myself. If colleagues harrass me, then I must confront them directly without flinching or being mean in return, and without any private rancour. This will earn respect.

In the battle of the sexes each side invents conspiracy theories about the other so it can ignore its own role in the conflict. It then continues to act in a way that causes in the other sex the very behavior that offends.</comment>


Ask HN: Dedicated advertising? - <AUTHOR>

How does a site move from something like adsense into getting dedicated advertising clients like comedy central, specific vendors, networks, or companies?<p>How much do they pay? <comment><USER2> The fact that Comedy Central is your first example of an ideal advertiser means that you're probably not in a high-CPM niche. That's okay, but it means you probably ought to be running a couple million impressions each month to make direct sales realistic.

At lower volume (say, a 500k/mo+ impressions) you can investigate banner networks like Valueclick, Casale, etc. If you go this route, hopefully you're not turned off by flashing punch-the-monkey ads. It's not high-brow advertising.

Also look into augmenting your income with the contextual link networks -- Infolinks, Kontera. It's decent supplemental income.

For a general-interest entertainment-type site without a high page churn (that is, not a forum or social network), I'd aim for $2.50 overall page CPM. This might require lots of ad units and creativity, but you can make that happen without direct sales.

(Apologies if I've totally misread your niche -- in that case, hopefully all this is useful to someone else.)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is totally what I was looking for. thanks alot for your input :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Think of getting direct advertising like any other business sale you will make. You are selling the advertiser on the idea that getting their ads in front of your traffic will be valuable to them. This involves either you contacting them or if you are high profile enough them contacting you. There are lots of blog posts out their with more detail on how to do this. After doing this a lot you will probably start to see the value in a good ad network in a new way :-)

The amount you will get can vary widely but CPMs can be very high $5-$10 is a pretty good baseline, but it varies depending on a number of factors such as how much traffic you get, how targeted and engaged the audience is, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> If your site generate a relevant amount of traffic, you shouldn't have any trouble finding advertisers (example: if you run a televisions comparison website with a healthy readership, Samsung should come to you).

As far as payment, it's going to depend whether they're paying by the amount of views their ad receives, the amount of clicks there ad gets, or the amount of sales they receive (you could start affiliate advertising for large companies today depending on the niche). The more info you can provide on your users, and the more targeted they are, the more they are worth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your input.

Do you have any idea how much I should charge? My website is www.thathigh.com and it's growing pretty constantly, sometimes exponentially. It's a fairly niche website, but I've never negotiated with advertisers.

Should I offer $50 and work them down to $20? Or is that too many? (we're talking eCPM here, i guess?) are there any other types of payments out there (monthly for an ad or anything like that?)

thanks, i'm a complete newbie with advertising, i've been thrown into a really good challenge and have alot to learn.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, the "stoner" niche isn't known for having a lot of money (or at least spending it online) so it can be harder to find advertisers for. In your case, it would depend on the number of visitors you're receiving and where they come from. Visitors from search tend to do well with adsense or similar advertising. You may want to try buysellads.com or a similar service. Also helpful could be reducing the number of ads on the right side, focusing on the more relevant ones with hire payouts and present them as something more than advertising. Write a blog, make it a sponsored post like textsfromlastnight.com does, etc.

<comment><USER5> proexploit, exactly the information I've been looking for, I'm in a similar situation, very timely, thank you.

Do you know of any other services like buysellads.com?

<comment><USER4> text-link-ads.com might also be worth your time. All of the really great advertising platforms are often niche specific or limited by some of your site statistics so it's hard to give examples.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Simple guest to host VM escape for Parallels Desktop - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cr4.sh/2014/11/simple-guest-to-host-vm-escape-for.html <comment><USER2> Lot's of props to the author for no hyperbole. Clean write-up with an essentially admission that it is "working as intended but could be communicated better."

Far too many security articles find "working as intended" functionality and make it sound as if it is a complete systems breach (e.g. "With an administrator account on Windows you can access ring 0 via uEFI!!" \-- actual hyperbolic security announcement[0]).

[0] PDF: [http://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/publications/14-222...](http://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/publications/14-2221-extreme- escalation-presentation.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is why I eventually gave up on Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion (even after paying for both): they link way too much to the host machine (Fuse file systems, cross calling and so on). Now I just use Virtual Box. Most things I put into a virtual machine I don't expect to have a great experience with in the first place, so losing a few features is not a big sacrifice.

<comment><USER4> I've found that Parallels forces a lot of that stuff on you as a way to keep the two experiences melded together. VMware doesn't seem to be nearly as bad, especially if you don't let it do the install for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I didn't really get:

Isn't this menu item (Open on Mac) defined as a (shell?) function somewhere in Windows registry? Wouldn't it be easier to invoke it through this very function instead of interacting with the driver via IOCTL?

<comment><USER6> I think the intention was to show a more general approach.

For example, he detailed how he went through the debugger step by step, other integrations besides this shell visible one could be identified and exploited based on this writeup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the article:

       I think that It's very unlikely that Parallels will
       release any significant fixes or improvements for
       described mechanisms, because any reasonable fix will
       break the easy way of opening Windows documents on Mac.

Why not a new checkbox: "Trust the VM to open documents and execute code on the host"?

If you don't check it, the ability of the guest to execute code on the host is disabled.

<comment><USER8> Well, effectively that checkbox is already there, it just has the wrong name. So they don't need a new checkbox they just need to make it perfectly clear that the current checkbox makes some major changes to the security model that may not be entirely obvious to a naive user.

I think given the fact that Parallels is aimed at single users trying to get some interop going that the issue is not that serious but if anybody wants to use Parallels in a more hostile environment they'd be very happy to see this announcement in case they missed the implications of that checkbox.

Can you enable both the 'isolate windows from mac' and 'access windows folders from mac'? (You shouldn't be able to but it's not clear from the article if those options are mutually exclusive or not, it says 'in theory').

<comment><USER5> As someone who has some experience providing tech support for this, _isolate windows from mac_ disables all kinds of host-guest interactions at once (if I remember correctly).</comment></comment></comment>


Greeks Spend in Droves, Afraid of Losing Savings to a Bailout - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/world/europe/greeks-spend-droves-afraid-losing-savings-bailout.html

<comment><USER2> von Mises called this the "crack-up boom".</comment>


Free Way to Automatically Transcribe Audio and Video Files - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/speechtext-ai/the-best-free-way-to-automatically-transcribe-audio-and-video-files-988e05dcda31 <comment><USER2> use a free trial of an asr api?</comment>


Investing in Art for Commoners? - <AUTHOR> https://www.masterworks.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> This strikes me like a novel/bold way of granting access to an asset class that would be otherwise completely inaccessible to the average person.</comment>


Google classifies the "Reddit is Fun" app as porn, yanks it from Google Play - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/03/19/reddit-is-fun-gets-banned-from-the-google-play-store-for-sexually-explicit-material-reddit-users-in-an-uproar/

<comment><USER2> Conversely, is Google Images porn? I suspect Google would respond along the lines of 'no, though it can be used to find a variety of material including adult material'. Much like the Reddit app.</comment>


Week 1 of monetizing my Chrome extension - <AUTHOR> https://critter.blog/2020/01/14/week-1-of-monetizing-my-chrome-extension/ <comment><USER2> Great work, Mike, and fun stats. Hope it continues to grow. : )</comment>